FCP: Fundamental Chess Patterns 1-50, a handbook to improve your pattern recognition: Can you afford not to know them? (Chess manual)

It is not easy for beginners and intermediate players to learn how to play chess and improve their game. Instead of learning mainly through practice (which could take years) or the study of the games of Masters (difficult to understand and easily forgotten), this book presents a toolkit of weapons: essential patterns that are necessary to know in order to play well!

What you need to know before reading this book:
* How to use algebraic chess notation
* The ability to visualize at least 4 plies without a board
* Standard tactical devices, such as Counting, Forks, Skewers, Pins

What you will learn in this book:
* Basic patterns that every player must know
* How to improve your game
* How to use Opposition and Critical Squares
* How to recognize the opportunity for simplification
* And many other useful tips

What you will NOT get, and why:
* A complete analysis of each pattern, which would require up to 50 pages each. This is a handbook (where all you need is a position), not a manual (which explains all the ideas involved and how to discover the correct solution)
* Capablanca: nobody can learn to play well merely from the study of a book, it can only serve as a guide, and the rest must be done by the teacher

There is no limit to what is available to a chess student today: you can find gigabytes of books, software, and video - a jungle in which the student can go astray.
But when a Knight checks your King in an endgame, do you know the best square to move your King to, in order to avoid being checked in the next four moves? "Click to look inside" to know.

It is well known that strong players see a position broken down into elementary groups (chunks), each having specific, known characteristics. This is due to the huge number of games they have played, analyzed and retained in memory. As a result, they immediately recognize winning patterns.

This book includes NO puzzles, BUT a selection of just (!?) 50 patterns chosen from among the essential patterns. These patterns need to be engraved in your mind, so that you recognize them immediately (regardless of which side of the board you are on), without any doubt or hesitation.

These are all patterns that are essential to know in order to be able to play well. They are not endless lists of moves, which would be impossible to remember, but rather positions that occur frequently, that you can learn to recognize without thinking, the way Masters do.

My teacher used to say: there are things to understand and things to remember. Here you have to remember.

Are all these patterns known? Sure they are, but this is not the point. A GM knows over ten thousand, a CM about 200, but what about you? Can you afford not to know a these few key patterns?

Novice and intermediate players are the target of this book, class B (1700 rating or less).

Periodically going through these patterns will help you avoid losses, win more games, and reduce your thinking time. If only one of these patterns was unknown to you (or you were uncertain what to do when you saw it), your learning time will not be wasted. If already know them all, and have never fallen victim to any of them, then great, play tournaments and enjoy Evelyne Nicod's cat illustrations.

"Trapping a piece" section of this manual shows the terrible blunder of Fischer in the 1st game of 1972 tournament.

You can see for free on scacchi.vecchilibri.eu/partite many related games, with English comments. Follow through and download PGN. Appearance is simple and neat, and diagrams start at the appropriate move. An Internet connection is needed. Use a tablet or computer for best results.

Enjoy the reading!

Rodolfo Pardi, librarian, FSI (Italian Chess Federation) instructor and arbiter

Notice: Translation from Italian was recently checked, however some minor language errors might still be there, for which I apologize.
This book uses algebraic notation with figurines